Thule Spare Me

Product Details

Thule Spare Me

Thule's Spare Me rack bolts onto the mount for your spare tire and securely carries two bicycles (total weight up to 75 pounds). It has Thule's Stay-Put cradles that protect your bikes and boasts an anti-sway design to keep your bikes from swinging together or hitting your vehicle. The arms fold down when not in use. An integrated locking cable and locking knob make it easy to secure bikes to the carrier and the carrier to the vehicle.

For Jeep Wrangler owners there's limited selection as you can't use most hitch racks due to the spare tire... So the Thule SpareMe rack becomes an obvious and logical choice. The reviews certainly helped its case and I happily purchased this rack.
The rack is pretty easy to install but I got caught on two items.
First, Step 4 in the instruction manual describes a long and short mounting bracket and a long and short standoff extension. Basically you can use different combinations of long and short with different tire sizes. The tires on my Wrangler are stock and I ended up just using the short bracket with NO standoff extension. If you're planning on changing tires in the future, you will want to keep the longer bracket and extensions for later.
Second, step 6 in the manual describes a very simple removal of the plastic plug from the locking knob using a screwdriver. This is not quite so simple, at least it wasn't for me. After breaking off bits and pieces of the plastic plug and searching for a vice-grip to remove the center, we ended up disassembling the entire locking knob to push the plug out from behind. Once the plug was removed and the knob was reassembled, assembly went on without a hitch, no pun intended.
Once assembled onto the vehicle, this rack is very sturdy. If you do the assembly right, you should not be able to shake the rack without shaking your vehicle as well. Happy Trails!

The "Spare Me" was perfect for our CR-V. Installation was a breeze, and removing the carrier once the main bracket is on the wheel and replacing the wheel cover takes only a few moments. We can easily, and quickly, get the bikes on the carrier and head for the lake. We've also used it for the past two summers to take the bikes to Colorado.